Years ago I attended a revue featuring a juggler who could spin ten dinner plates on ten bamboo wands at the same time. His secret was to tend to each in order. I can admire his discipline more after guiding the Foundation this past year, for we have had several plates spinning ourselves.

The value of the portfolio regained much of the value lost during the market meltdown that occurred in 2001-2002. That was good news. The bad was that interest rates were at a forty year low, so that our distributable income was far less than the five per cent mandatory distribution required by law.

There are movements in both houses of Congress to change the rules by which non-profit organizations must abide. What started out as an effort to prevent abuses such as took place in United Way, has become a movement to make it difficult, if not impossible,
for foundations such as ours to continue from generation to generation. Each decision we make is against a background of possible change.

After considerable soul searching, the Board and the Advisory Board agreed that it was vitally important to conserve the value of the endowment portfolio. For several years we had made grants equivalent to our income and allowed growth in portfolio value to cover administrative expenses. Those days are gone and may not return.

The law allows us to take credit for those years in which grants and allowed expenses exceeded our mandated five per cent distribution. The Board voted to do so.

Consequently, in fiscal 2003 and again for fiscal 2004 we have limited our grant making to those projects for which we had made long term commitments, primarily scholarships at University of Oklahoma, University of Central Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University at Oklahoma City and Rogers State University. We made the final ten thousand dollar grant of the forty thousand dollars pledged to the Lone Oak, Texas area library in 2003.
We continue to support the work of the National Institute for Developmental Delays.

We have agreed to consider no unsolicited proposals until our income recovers, and
Congress decides what reforms it will require. Should things fall into line and the Board deem it advisable to open ourselves to unsolicited proposals it will be posted on the new Aldridge Foundation website:

http://www.aldridgefoundation.org

~ Robert Aldridge, Chairman ~